In Reply to: It's a no-win situation... posted by MrSkibibles on May 29, 2003 at 4:36 PM:
: No matter what happens, somebody will get peed off. If you tell the person with too many items to check out somewhere else, they will get angry, also you run the risk of them causing a scene and tying up the lines doing so. If you don't chase them away, you will anger the person behind them. It's the lesser of two evils! And you know the customer is always right,even if they are an idiot who can't count!
Since I am not all-knowing or omnipotent, I generally don't know how many items everybody has in their carts until they actually come up to the register and start putting their stuff there. I simply can't keep stopping to count the items in everyone's cart to make sure that everyone in line has fewer than 10 - it's not always easy to tell since some people have a large number of small items which doesn't look like much at a glance, and other people have just a couple big items which looks like a lot more. This creates problems when someone doesn't/can't read the "10 Items or Less!" sign and gets in line. Often, once such a person gets to me and starts putting his/her stuff on the counter, it's only then that I realize how much stuff they have, so it really puts me in a tough situation. I often do tell such a person that this is an express, only to be met with "THEN WHY THE $@^!* DID YOU LET ME WAIT ALL THAT TIME IN LINE?!" Uh, gee, sorry, but I can't count every item in everyone's cart - I basically depend on people being literate and seeing the sign themselves, and anyone who doesn't, well that's your own problem. On occasion, I have allowed those kind of people to check out there anyway, just because this often happens when it is crowded, and more often than not it isn't until after I already started scanning someone's stuff that I finally realize they have too much, and it just isn't worth it making everyone else wait while I try to argue with this moron.
That is something I really try to avoid because doing so creates ANOTHER problem - if someone else gets in line with more than 10 items (and I just happen to glance over there and can tell that it obviously IS more than 10) and tell them that they shouldn't be in line here, I get, "Well, you just let that person through who had a lot more! I want to speak to your manager!" I usually try to explain that I did not "let" that other person in line - I was simply unaware that they had too much stuff until they actually started putting their stuff on the counter - and since I now know, ahead of time, that *you* have too much stuff, I will tell you not be in line here. Of course, most people are just too dumb to understand this. I actually had a similar situation happen yesterday (non-Express-line-related) when I was on register (I'm not a cashier, but I will go on register to keep lines down when necessary) and the lines of customers were starting to diminish, so I started telling people my register is closed. Two minutes later, dozens of people (well, that may be a SLIGHT exaggeration) start appearing out of nowhere and getting in checkout lines, so I reopen the register. Well, one of the customers I had earlier told that I'm closed was now at the express line (right next to my register) complaining to that cashier about me and insisting on getting the manager's name...
Her: I want to talk to your manager!
Cashier: Well, we have a couple managers here now - would you like to talk to them?
Her: No, I want to talk to the head manager!
Cashier: OK, come in and ask for Tom.
Her: What's his last name?
Cashier: I don't know. *asks me* What's Tom's last name?
Me: She doesn't need his last name.
Her: So it's Tom Manager?
Cashier: Yeah, basically.
Her: *walks out the door, steaming*
This lady simply could not understand that the lines of people constantly fluctuate, and that I cannot always be on register (I have other things that I have to do) so I close the register whenever I can, but I will immediately reopen when people start appearing out of nowhere. I can't predict that will happen - it just happens, and people simply have to understand that.